


portraits

by returnsandreturns



Category: Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Genre: F/M, M/M, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1863294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/returnsandreturns/pseuds/returnsandreturns
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lately, he's been painting Sebastian, as he used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	portraits

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on a flash drive since high school. Since I just graduated college, I am giving up on it. Cheers.

Lately, he’s been painting Sebastian, as he used to be. 

It is welcome relief from jungles and the crumbling aftermaths of civilizations, to country houses and their manicured gardens. He has never painted anyone else’s portrait, caring too little for Celia and too much for Julia, and he only did so originally because Sebastian insisted and there was nothing he could ask that Charles would deny him.

They learned those lessons an impossibly hard way.

 *

 “You must sit still,” Charles murmurs, amused as Sebastian scowls exaggeratedly at him and shifts on the stool once more. 

 “Don’t you have a good enough picture of me in your mind, Charles, to do this without me having to pose?” He stretches, arms reaching towards the high ceilings of the garden room, sunlight catching the pale hairs exposed at his wrists. Charles is tempted for a moment with the wicked urge to tell him to stay like that, poised like he’s on the brink of diving, but he keeps it to himself. 

 “I didn’t even want to paint you,” he says, and Sebastian scoffs, but he continues despite it: “I could never hope to do you justice.”

 “. . .why, you’re getting sentimental.” There is the sound of shoes tapping against marble floors and then Sebastian is standing behind him, one hand curled around his arm, looking at the canvas. It’s just a sketch, the basic lines of his wry smile and a vague attempt at his eyes, but Sebastian laughs the sort of laugh that Charles has memorized the sound of. It is catalogued in his mind with occasions and meanings, and he knows that he is pleased with it. 

They are silent like that for several long moments, standing just close enough that anywhere their skin touches, Charles can feel himself burn. He has learned how to sparingly touch Sebastian, but it’s never in his control. The hand on his arm slides down until he can feel fingers tangling in his, squeezing tight, and then Sebastian leans over to steal the paintbrush.

 Later, a moustache has been added clumsily on the portrait (“Rather dashing, I think,” Sebastian murmurs, contemplating. “Perhaps I should grow one?”) and both of their crisp white shirts are streaked black and forgotten on the edges of the fountain. They manage to make themselves decent before Bridey arrives home, but the paints escaped their memory.

 “I can’t say that I know much about art,” Brideshead murmurs, upon observation, then wanders from the room without further comment. Sebastian fixes him with a raised eyebrow and a smirk before dissolving into laughter, letting it drift up into the air around them as he slings his arms around Charles’ shoulders and rests his parted lips against his neck. The laughter shakes all the way through Charles as he holds him up, just as he has always done. Someone must take care of Sebastian (delicate, careless, smiling Sebastian), and he is glad that the task has now fallen exclusively to him.

 

 *

Julia finds the portrait, years later, where Sebastian had stowed it away beneath his bed with the remnants of the life he used to have outside of Brideshead, dried flowers that Charles can remember covering his rooms so long ago, dusty books of poetry that he suspects were stolen away from Anthony to keep him from continuing his performances. She has laid everything out on the floor when he finds her there, dress pooling around her as she kneels to look at the canvas.

“He was so beautiful then,” she whispers, without looking up. 

“Yes,” Charles replies. “I rather suspect it runs in the family.”

The smile she shoots him is sudden and quicksilver, gone as soon as it appears. 

“None of us are beautiful like Sebastian,” she says. “Even at his very worst, he’ll still have all of our charm stashed away in his coat pockets.”

 They don’t talk about Sebastian often; when they do, they often speak of him as if he’s passed away, without realizing. Charles supposes that the Sebastian before them has been long dead, but instead of saying anything, he kneels beside Julia to rest an arm around her waist. 

She is thin, bird-boned and pale, but her features are strong and there is color in her cheeks. She escaped Cordelia’s handsomeness, but she doesn’t look like Sebastian. Only when she’s asleep does Charles catch a glimpse of him in a long arm curled above her head, an almost vacant smile. 

Julia leans into him but doesn’t hold on. 

She may love him, but she doesn’t need him.

For now, that’s enough.


End file.
